When Flowers Bloom, A Conflict Takes Root

By ERIC SCHMITT

Published: May 29, 1997

WASHINGTON, May 28—
The Pentagon prepares for all kinds of conflict, but it never planned for the Great Petunia War.

A turf battle has erupted this spring between the military's two major retailers -- commissaries and base or post exchanges -- over which can sell plants for flower beds and gardens to military shoppers.

What started as a squabble over pansies and begonias has escalated to include cooking oil, fruits, vegetables, meats and seafood. The tempest in a flower pot has become so serious that two two-star generals will meet on Thursday to try to settle the growing fight.

All of this would not matter much except that the dispute has so poisoned relations between the two rival retailers that it could upset a Pentagon cost-cutting proposal to combine some of the stores' now-separate operations under one roof.

''We have two multibillion-dollar businesses acting like little kids,'' said a Pentagon official familiar with the fray.

Members of Congress are also shaking their head in dismay, hoping the military can sort things out. ''From up here, it looks awfully petty,'' said one Congressional aide who is following the matter.

The fight has its roots in jealousies and mutual suspicions that seem more common to skirmishes among mom-and-pop stores than to two businesses whose combined annual sales total about $14 billion.

In the military retail world, commissaries are the supermarkets and post exchanges, called PX's by generations of G.I.'s, are the department stores. Both types of stores are run by Pentagon agencies and exist as military perks, offering prices below those in commercial stores. Some items, like diapers and soda pop, are sold in both commissaries and exchanges, but the two retailers divvy up their products to limit overlap. Commissaries receive nearly $1 billion a year in Federal subsidies and could undercut post exchanges, which are not subsidized, on most items if they competed directly.

The exchanges say the garden centers have the sole right to sell bedding plants, like marigolds and petunias. But some commissaries have ''historically offered'' plants plants in the spring, said Peggy Young, programs chief for the Defense Commissary Agency in Fort Lee, Va.

A few weeks ago, a marketing official in the commissary's high command sent a memorandum to stores urging them to sell bedding plants as a convenience to customers. The exchanges howled in protest and the memorandum was rescinded, but not before ''the cows were out of the barn,'' one commissary official said.

In April alone, the commissary at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia sold $10,000 in bedding plants and hanging baskets, and it intends to keep selling such plants until early June. Commissaries at other installations, including Fort Benning, Ga., and Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., sold bedding plants earlier this spring but have since stopped.

The exchanges retaliated, selling truckloads of cooking oil and produce straight from the farm, items that are normally sold only at commissaries. At Fort Sam Houston in Texas, exchange officials distributed fliers this month advertising a ''fruit, vegetable, meat and seafood truckload sale.''

''This is war,'' said one official sympathetic to the exchanges' complaints, who like most of the people interviewed for this article insisted on anonymity to avoid embarrassment.

Commissary officials said their PX counterparts were overreacting.

''The exchange folks are swatting a fly with a sledgehammer,'' said one commissary official. ''I don't get it.''